House leaders plot new fall GOP strategy

For the first time in months, House Republicans are facing no immediate cataclysmic deadlines, and GOP leaders are struggling to come up with an agenda to fill the 19 legislative days that are left in 2013.

Need evidence? The House votes Monday evening and will finish its work week Wednesday. After that, the House is out of session until Nov. 12. Internally, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and senior Republicans aren’t discussing coming back early from the scheduled recess, but instead, they are wondering if they’ll cancel some of the remaining days in session.

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After an exhausting October full of late-night and weekend votes, the slower pace is a sharp change for the House.

Having just gotten through a grueling debt ceiling and government funding fight, the next big deadline is Dec. 13, when a bipartisan group of House and Senate budget negotiators are scheduled to report whether they have reached an agreement. There appears to be a stark split within Republican leadership about whether the budget process Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is starting has any chance of succeeding. Some House Republicans believe these bicameral talks are a political trap, where Democrats are going to insist on raising taxes. Other top House GOP aides think it’s the best way to wrap up a deal to fund the government through the 2014 election cycle and remove the issue from the front pages until after voters have gone to the polls.

Throughout leadership and the House Republican Conference there’s a sense of bewilderment and confusion about what leadership will move to next. The fiscal fights with President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats have pushed the GOP’s numbers to barrel-scraping lows. And there’s a real sense that Republicans could lose control of the House next year.

Yet there’s not much going on in the Capitol.

The future of Obamacare — and how far to go in trying to undo the 2010 Affordable Care Act — remains at center stage for House Republicans.

On Monday, House GOP chiefs of staff are meeting with leadership and the House Administration Committee on how members and staff will handle enrollment in the health care exchanges mandated under ACA. Boehner and House Republicans unsuccessfully pushed legislation that would end the government’s employer contribution to health care for lawmakers and aides. Now that they have to sign up, House Republicans face numerous questions on how to do so and who is covered.

In the meantime, it appears that the House will — once again — vote to delay portions of Obamacare, setting up another fight with Senate Democrats and the White House.

In an appearance on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers,” Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said there are discussions to further delay the date by which all Americans must have health insurance. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is expected to testify in front of Upton’s panel Wednesday.

“We learned a lot this last week; we’re going to learn more, I presume, this next week. And you know, this is people’s health care; it’s a lot of money out of their own pocket,” Upton said in the C-SPAN interview. “Lot of changes are there, too. And where this leads us, time will tell, but I think we’re going to try to take this evidence that we saw [last] week and see what adjustments we might be able to make.”

No date has been set yet for this vote, senior House GOP aides said.

Republicans will also spend the remaining days of 2013 pushing for Sebelius to step down over the botched rollout of the Obamacare website.

“The president has been poorly served in the implementation of his own signature legislation,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) said during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “If Kathleen Sebelius can’t reorganize to meet his agenda, then she shouldn’t be there.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill also have been highly critical of the Obama administration’s handling of the program, although no one in the party has called for her resignation, and there is no sign that Sebelius’s departure is imminent.